Letterboxd — Your life in film

Is a story about the good apple what's important right now? Not sure, so I'll leave that to you. A trio of terrific performances make this sing when it has to, though, and you could do a lot worse than a reverse TRAINING DAY that suggests that there's still some good to be done behind a badge.

I prefer the Johnny-Goes-To-War movie as Banana Republic commercial teenage melodrama that was PEARL HARBOR, but it's hard to deny that this stretches out that movie's incredible War-is-Rad attack sequence into an entire movie.

In BAD BOYS II, they sneak a small army into Cuba. In this one they fly commercial to Mexico.

Not without its moments, including a handful of good lines and some nice handheld longer takes and assorted camera gags in the relatively legible action sequences. Otherwise this is mightily generic. You'll be longing for the manic, gorgeous awfulness of Bay's plastic poison.

A more effective dipshit provocation than, say, JOKER, and fueled by an even more electric performance. Simultaneously clueless and insightful, thrilling and bafflingly stupid. Discussed on Episode 27 of The Suspense is Killing Us.

More timely than you'd expect and genuinely unpleasant; much more than the paranoid fantasy of rich white folks afraid of the cops that I was expecting. Should have known coming from the highly underappreciated Jonathan Kaplan. Discussed on Episode 27 of The Suspense is Killing Us.

I'd have preferred an entire movie about Buscemi's character. Discussed on Episode 27 of The Suspense is Killing Us.

This plays to me now sort of like the movie the Coens' detractors frequently accuse them of making: frequently sort of smugly superior and misanthropic and mean. And Labute's typically disorganized here, with a lot of small soft targets that he often attacks with simple clueless provocations or broad caricature. That said it's often quite funny and there's pretty interesting thread here about how the characters are so susceptible to fantasy because they're united by naivete and simple emotional vulnerability. I liked it?

Some interesting threads get tugged a little here, about stark differences of class and gender and education among slaves and black abolitionists alike, but not hard enough to overcome what's mostly some very generic biopic stuff. And personally I would have loved a lot more of Tubman's Union Army career.

Turn the holy pictures so they face the wall

A Heartbreaking Work of Steigering Genius

Extremely laid back heist film starring Jean-Claude Killy. The threadbare plot is mostly built out from the tons of great skiing footage courtesy Willy Bogner, which is basically the main attraction (especially because Killy is an absolute charisma vacuum who can barely get his dialogue out), at least until when Vittorio De Sica turns up as the insurance investigator.

This changes exactly zero rules. Discussed on Episode 26 of The Suspense is Killing Us.